The assault on our democracy is still happening after January 6th

      We saw an unimaginable assault on our democracy on January 6th.  It will go down in American history along with September 11th.  One marks a foreign assault on our democracy and the second was a presidential led internal assault.  We shouldn't forget that the forces that created the January 6th assault have been using undemocratic methods to undermine our democracy for a long time.  Our founding fathers were sensitive to the tyranny of the majority.  We now know that tyranny of a minority is just as dangerous.  Here are the other means of assault by a minority.

      We have seen the electoral college hand the executive branch of our government to the person who came in second in the election.  The winner takes all aspects of the college gives states with small populations an undue influence in presidential elections.  When a Democrat candidate wins California by 4 million votes 3,999,999 votes are meaningless in counting in the electoral college.  We shouldn't forget that with a change of 77,000 votes out of over 150 million votes we would have seen the swearing-in of Trump for a second term because of the electoral college.

     The Senate gives states with small populations undemocratic influence.  Since small population states tend to be Republican and conservative this makes liberal legislation an uphill fight to get passed.  The people of Wyoming, North, and South Dakota have 1/20 the population of California but 3 times the number of votes in the Senate.  Add to the use of the filibuster in the Senate requiring 60 votes for much of the legislation and conservatives in the Senate can defeat legislation supported by strong majorities of the citizens of the United States.

     We now see that the Republicans are planning on limiting the ease of voting after Trump's defeat and the loss of 2 Senate seats in Georgia.  They will make it harder to vote by mail and restrict the number of days to vote.  Republicans know that if voting is restricted to one day they have a better chance to win. Requiring voter ID is also likely to be pushed by Republicans because Democrat voters are less likely to have valid ID's.  Watch for not allowing student IDs but allowing handgun IDs.  Restricting Democrat voters is preferable to try to expand their base to a broader segment of the country because those segments are of a different color than white.  Racism is still a cancer eating at the Republican Party that Trump leads.  Notice how many Confederate flags and Nazi symbols were apparent when the mob attacked the Capitol?

    The final assault on our democracy is the gerrymandering of electoral districts.  While gerrymandering has been done by both Democrats and Republicans it has been used far more by Republicans to limit the votes of minority populations.

    The demographics of our country are creating more Democrat voters that should lead to more victories for Democrats but we should expect that Republicans will use every undemocratic tool to retain power even if it uses autocratic methods.  We just saw it most dramatically on January 6th.

P.S.

Sanders memes are so funny